Hi! So I got Assiiml and I'm loving it! Just wanted to share how I'm doing this as so far I'm finding it better for furthering my Japanese than Genki.
Assimil's Japanese With Ease is an audio based program. You listen, you shadow, then you do exercises. None of the audio is in English. It's all in Japanese. First there's the passive phase, and then the active phase. What I do is listen to today's lesson audio (which is generally a few minute long) with the book closed to try to parse the subject without translation or looking at the Japanese script. Audio comes in three parts so far: a slow version that breaks down every word to make it easily repeatable, a more normal speed (but still slow comparative to regular Japanese), followed by a review (renshu) of the terminology learned that lesson. Where I'm in my lessons now though, they've decided to take the training wheels off and there is no longer a super slow version.
After listening, I open my book and listen again, but this time read along to it while reading the Japanese script, furigana and all, while making note of any kanji I may know or don't know. Then I repeat the audio and read the English translation while listening. After the English listen, I tend to repeat the audio again, but pause after every line and say the dialogue outloud, noting of subtleties (for example, を doesn't sound like wo, it sounds like o). Once I've finished shadowing, I listen one more time and then continously flip between the Japanese script and English translation to make notes in grammar and structure.
After that, I play the audio again, and I write every single piece of dialogue in Japanese. Every single piece. In Japanese. I cannot stress how important this is. I've found myself able to recognize kana for instance on sight, but once I'm forced to write it I have to think for a minute before I recall it. It's weird. But it's helping me kana and writing immensely. It's also helping me learn to read much faster. After writing the script in Japanese, I check the book and see if I wrote it all down correctly. From there, I translate every line into English. I finish up by doing a final listen to the audio and repeat again without pausing.
Then I do the exercises in the book and do RTK for that day.
I highly suggest doing Assimil. It's helping my vocab, word retention, reading speed, and listening soooo much.
I think the emphasis on Genki is very overstated and Japanese With Ease should be celebrated among the self learning community more.
My two cents!
Assimil's Japanese With Ease is an audio based program. You listen, you shadow, then you do exercises. None of the audio is in English. It's all in Japanese. First there's the passive phase, and then the active phase. What I do is listen to today's lesson audio (which is generally a few minute long) with the book closed to try to parse the subject without translation or looking at the Japanese script. Audio comes in three parts so far: a slow version that breaks down every word to make it easily repeatable, a more normal speed (but still slow comparative to regular Japanese), followed by a review (renshu) of the terminology learned that lesson. Where I'm in my lessons now though, they've decided to take the training wheels off and there is no longer a super slow version.
After listening, I open my book and listen again, but this time read along to it while reading the Japanese script, furigana and all, while making note of any kanji I may know or don't know. Then I repeat the audio and read the English translation while listening. After the English listen, I tend to repeat the audio again, but pause after every line and say the dialogue outloud, noting of subtleties (for example, を doesn't sound like wo, it sounds like o). Once I've finished shadowing, I listen one more time and then continously flip between the Japanese script and English translation to make notes in grammar and structure.
After that, I play the audio again, and I write every single piece of dialogue in Japanese. Every single piece. In Japanese. I cannot stress how important this is. I've found myself able to recognize kana for instance on sight, but once I'm forced to write it I have to think for a minute before I recall it. It's weird. But it's helping me kana and writing immensely. It's also helping me learn to read much faster. After writing the script in Japanese, I check the book and see if I wrote it all down correctly. From there, I translate every line into English. I finish up by doing a final listen to the audio and repeat again without pausing.
Then I do the exercises in the book and do RTK for that day.
I highly suggest doing Assimil. It's helping my vocab, word retention, reading speed, and listening soooo much.
I think the emphasis on Genki is very overstated and Japanese With Ease should be celebrated among the self learning community more.
My two cents!
Edited: 2016-06-10, 2:58 pm
